Fantastic - And some wonder how history repeats itself? It's called making the same mistake.

9:07 am November 10, 2010

Tony FL wrote :

Republicans and conservatives insist that "we the people" must foot the bill for ALL of this Nation's expenses. Corporations not only enjoy the UNBELIEVABLE priviledges of being "virtual persons", shields for executives against most if not all legal liablities, but also preferential tax treatment, where the same loopholes enacted through sponsored legislation except them virtually of any taxes. And they are also "too big to fail", because growing through monopolization and consolidation was the prefered (the easiest) way to grow in the last few decades. So what gives? According to the Republicans and Conservatives, NOTHING. The cornerstone of this republic, they argue, are the "holly cash cow" corporations. Further, freedom and liberty, to them, is reduced to allow for these these enterprises to monopolize and create monopolized metastasis cluster, which does not only go against the very principles of unobstructed, open and flexible free market and freedom of enterprise, reducing competition, obstructing innovation, and leading to dangerous structural dislocation to various interlinked sectors of the economy. Individual Equality is also reduced to equal access to the fictional "trickle down". The horrendous results of such "trickle down" on the Middle America thus far can be summarized as follows:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• While millions of Americans are unemployed and the national debt is soaring, it seems top financial executives are far from feeling the pinch. A recent Wall Street Journal survey estimates they'll receive a staggering $144 billion dollars in compensation and benefits this year. This equals to the entire 2008 stimulus package.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

If there is any "trickle" of prosperity, it is OBVIOUSLY flowing UP NOT DOWN. And Republicans and Conservatives, to a large degree, are hellbent to make sure this DOES NOT CHANGE.
They use any trick in the book, from using "icons" of "fiscal responsibility" like Ronald Reagan, who WERE ANYTHING BUT...to using fear tactics to essentially deliver this message: -

This country belongs to the top 1% of wealthy individuals, whose wishes are imposed on the remaining 99% of the population, who must be THANKFUL to be able to hold a JOB. Food for freedom. Plain and simple. Republicans want us to choose food and throw all individual rights and freedoms out the window.

Ignorant American electorate.
Two years from now they'd elect a republican president, a republican senate, and a republican house, because they're fed up with the slow progress of the process of undoing the damages done to our system for 8 consecutive reckless years 2000-2008. Then another bubble 'd be born, and burst....And this exact ignorant and impatient American electorate'd come calling the Dems in to clean house again.
And the cycle'd repeat itself.
This country is going down the drain.

9:34 am November 10, 2010

Michael wrote :

Could not of said it better myself, Tony.
Thank you for the George Carlin reference.

9:39 am November 10, 2010

RWJ TX wrote :

The Arrogant American Elite can only think that anyone who does not think like they do are ignorant...not that they could see that the current Democrat controlled government has been much more reckless, the so called financial reform is about propping up the financial institutions that caused the recent meltdown on the backs of those that were more fiscally responsible, i.e. giving the advantage to big blood sucking Corporations over small productive ones.

11:33 am November 10, 2010

sheryllowen wrote :

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2:31 pm November 10, 2010

CJ FL wrote :

It continues to amaze me that the people who blame Bush for the economic troubles seem to completely disregard that the Democrats controlled both Legistlative branches at the time, and have now controlled them for 4 years. Last I checked, the President can propose, veto, or approve legislation, but only Congress can actually write or initiate legislation. And all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. Therefore, Pelosi and the House Dems have had complete control over tax policy for the last 4 years.

Finally, here's a little lesson - Taxes are not an instrument of punishmet, they are a method to raise revenue to support the operations of the government. The reason corporations get "preferential tax treatment" is because all corporate profit gets taxed twice - first as a tax on the corporate income, and then again as a dividend tax when that profit is passed to shareholders. Complain all you want, but by the time that money gets into the pocket of the shareholder, the Federal Government has taken at least 30% and in some cases more than 50% of it! Furthermore, corporations don't really pay taxes! All taxes charged to a corporation are passed on to their customers in the form of higher prices, their workers in the form of lower wages, and their shareholders in the form of smaller dividends. So I guess that means the Dems just want to screw over customers, workers, and all those retired school teachers whose pensions are invested in divided paying stocks...

2:55 pm November 10, 2010

Tony FL wrote :

@CJ FL Nice shilling for the corporations! No one is advocating punishment, just what's right and equitable. All income is taxed, and corporate income is no different. The double-taxation is a bold faced lie. Anyone who receives significant taxable dividend income knows myriad of ways to defer the payment of dividend taxes practically forever. But this argument is simply a smoke screen used by corporate shills.
In reality, shareholders are not THE SAME as corporation. Corporation is a legal stand-alone entity. Shareholders are private individuals, many of whom are not even corporate managers nor do they have any relation to the corporation, other than holding stock ownership. Additionally, corporation does not have to distribute profits as dividends, and only a fraction of profits is ever distributed as dividends, as you well know.
As to "passing the buck" onto consumer, this is a non sequitur argument. In an unobstructed free market corporations are not able to effectively do this, so if you agree that corporations indeed get away with passing the tax onto consumer, then you must also agree with the premise that the market is monopolized, and should be broken up.

10:03 pm November 10, 2010

christopher isoldi, orig from NYC wrote :

The idiocy of the dodd frank wall sreet reform act is just that. In its writing, and, I have detected two major loopholes that are ripe for future abuse. The first is the ideology of the larger banks/financial institutions to still trade derivatives that have been proven toxic for our entire financial industry, this is in the respects that they still form a hazard of being dealt with eronoeously! They have been treated as such in the past, what makes poeple appluaud such an inclination of something that now, and just because of tighter regulalory actions will supossedly save us from future financial ruin, I ask how? We know that the reason of allowing these past ideals of even dealing with these derivatives period are a recipie of didaster all over again. we shoud therefore note that these are two major things that in the dodd/ frank bill should have been eliminated altogether. thank you for you time and i loook foward to your say in this matter. In other words pleses e-mal me.

10:05 pm November 10, 2010

christopher isoldi, orig from NYC wrote :

The idiocy of the dodd frank wall sreet reform act is just that. In its writing, and, I have detected two major loopholes that are ripe for future abuse. The first is the ideology of the larger banks/financial institutions to still trade derivatives that have been proven toxic for our entire financial industry, this is in the respects that they still form a hazard of being dealt with eronoeously! They have been treated as such in the past, what makes poeple appluaud such an inclination of something that now, and just because of tighter regulalory actions will supossedly save us from future financial ruin, I ask how? We know that the reason of allowing these past ideals of even dealing with these derivatives period are a recipie of disaster all over again. we shoud therefore note that these are two major things that in the dodd/ frank bill should have been eliminated altogether. thank you for you time and i loook foward to your say in this matter. In other words pleses e-mal me.

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